Chapter 97

“Lorenzo!” Eleanor cried out with an astonished look on her face.

The alpha managed to follow Eleanor’s scent through the building. When he finally broke through the various barriers, he came upon a dingy-looking door. The second he heard her distressed cry, Lorenzo smashed the door off its hinges.

He wasn’t entirely sure what awaited him beyond the door, but what he saw was enough to trigger his inner beast. Cruz was looming over his mate with his hand still extended in the air. His eyes dropped to Eleanor to find that her cheek was beating red.

Anger and rage speared through him. Lorenzo felt his eyes glow, his canines elongated with a sharpened need to tear Sterling to pieces.

“Did you hit my mate?” he snarled

Cruz merely sneered with disinterest. “She wasn’t playing nice, so I needed to knock a little sense back into her,” he said tauntingly.

Eleanor felt her whole body shake from the terrifying sounds that came from Lorenzo. “You’ll pay for that.”

His eyes were solely locked on the other alpha as he tried to advance forward. Cruz narrowed his eyes and kept his sneer in place. He secretly reached behind his back to grab something from his back pocket.

Before Lorenzo got a real chance to move, Sterling returned his hand to reveal a deadly-looking blade. Eleanor gasped fearfully, triggering another loud growl to erupt from Lorenzo’s throat. Both of their gazes are glued to the long, curved knife that Cruz gripped in his one hand.

“Drop it.”

“No problem,” Sterling hummed. “Just hand over the flash drive and the three of us can part ways as though none of this ever happened.”

As if that were even possible at that point. Had it not been for the deadly amount of rage that was coursing through Lorenzo’s body, the man would have given a laugh. But no. No, the circumstances were far too severe for humor.

Lorenzo wanted nothing more than to rip Cruz’s head off. But he knew it couldn’t. Any slight move on his end could result in a possible injury for Eleanor.

“Drop the knife,” he seethed.

“Hand over the flash drive,” Cruz said insistently.

“No! Lorenzo, don’t you dare give it to him!” Eleanor shouted.

Lorenzo narrowed his eyes. His gaze flickered from his mate to the man who held her life in his hands. “So, this is what you meant when you told the Prince you were going to even out the score...”

“You know it wouldn’t have had to come to this, if you’d just accepted my earlier offers,” Sterling pointed out. “You see, now, I’ve presented you with an officer that you can’t refuse so easily. Or can you? How much do you actually care about Eleanor? Is she worth the lives of hundreds of others?”

“Shut up,” Eleanor hissed. “Don’t you dare try and screw with his head. Lorenzo, do not give him the flash drive!”

“The choice is yours, Sinclair. The ideal answer is pretty straightforward. All you’ve got to do is hand over the USB and this whole mess goes away.”

But it would never go away. Deep down all of them knew the truth.

“Over my dead body,” he gritted.

Sterling chuckled, bearing all of his perfectly white teeth in a mocking smile.

“More like, over ‘her’ dead body,” he stated.

Eleanor’s eyes grew impossibly wider as the blade came to be pressed against the delicate skin of her neck. She struggled not to tremble for a single jutting move would cause her to end up bleeding.

“You know, now that I think about it...Perhaps it would be better to just snap her neck, don’t you think,” Cruz asked. “It would certainly give an ironic flair to the ending of this case. Our fearless, avenging angel, Eleanor Wright, ended up dead just like the other girls who were found lying out in the gutters.”

Lorenzo fought back his third snarl as he reached into his inner jacket pocket. He took out the small USB and held it up for Cruz to see.

“You want the flash drive...Come and take it then.”

Eleanor’s expression filled with dread. Cruz lowered the blade and slowly, warily moved his way toward Lorenzo. She continued to work at the binds around her wrists.

Right as Sterling came to stand in front of Lorenzo, the alpha threw the flash drive to the furthest end of the room. Cruz let out a curse and chased after it. However, Lorenzo grabbed for the back of his jacket and hauled him back on his heels. His fists swung and knocked Cruz across the face.

The two tumbled to the ground and were seconds away from letting their second natures take over. The air around them all thickened with a venomous energy that made it difficult to breathe. Both alphas asserted their dominance, thrashing their claws and snapping their teeth. Each one of them managed to strike decent hits against the other.

Meanwhile, Eleanor was finally able to work herself free from the restraints and rushed to get her hands on the flash drive. Cruz noticed her out of the corner of his eyes and made a sharp move to lunge for her.

“Give me that fucking flash drive!” he screamed.

Lorenzo latched his hands around Sterling from behind, keeping him from getting any closer to Eleanor. But Eleanor watched with great horror as Cruz reached for his blade and turned to thrust the end of it into Lorenzo’s side.

All the air was sucked from her lungs. “LORENZO!!”

Within seconds, the room was flooded with guards, all aiming their weapons at Cruz. Lorenzo slowly slumped to the ground. The second Sterling tried to move, a wave of bullets broke through the air and struck him dead in the chest.

Cruz was truly dead by the time his body hit the floor. But from the amount of blood that was pooling around Lorenzo, there was a likely chance that Cruz wouldn’t be the only body they’d be carrying out.

“Please,” Eleanor sobbed. “Help me get him to a hospital.”